Debut Author Lydia Mathis on the Three Books That Gave Her Permission to Be Weird

AGE: 29
BASED IN: Atlanta
NOW PLUGGING: Desperate Bodies, September 2026

In her debut short story collection, Lydia Mathis explores the bodies of Black women and girls in both everyday and fantastical circumstances. A bloody figure steps into the office of a college safety officer, a sex worker and her client meet at a parent-teacher conference, a teacher shares her apartment with a ghost. Emerging from critic Roxane Gay’s imprint, the new title presses desire up against the powerful systems that seek to contain it.

What’s writing for you? An act of agony? Delight? 

Every part of the writing process has always been agony for me. From drafting to editing, it’s a battle. I get very in my head during the drafting process—I’m liable to quit a project after one or two sentences or get very far and then abandon a project for years. I hate reading my own writing, so that makes editing a struggle. I worry that I’ll read my work and find out it’s horrible. 

What’s one work that crystallized your voice?

It’s hard to choose just one—every book I’ve read has given me a little insight into what I could do and permission to do it. Like when I discovered how long paragraphs could be in José Saramago’s Blindness or the mixed media, fold-out translation/memoir that is Nox by Anne Carson. In all the books I read that do something unusual, I find teachers. But I think Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World was what really showed me the weirdness that I eventually let infiltrate my writing voice. 

What do you think your generation should read more—and less—of? 

I think this generation would benefit from reading more widely and diversely. I mean that in a multitude of ways. They should be reading from a range of races, cultures, countries, and the like. They should also be reading different points of view in terms of narrative perspective.

It is insane to me when people talk about hating first person or second person or third person—I think that is a result of low exposure. My generation should also be reading diverse writing styles (long paragraphs, long chapters, mixed media, no quotation marks, etc.) as well as different genres. People are closed off to a vast range of stories because they are convinced they hate some element it might contain.

Describe a “lowbrow” reading indulgence of yours.

I wouldn’t call anything lowbrow. I know the work that goes into creating a book, and that applies to any genre or type of writing, but I do have things I read that are purely for pleasure and feel indulgent. I am a big fan of romance books that have a little something extra going on. I love a paranormal romance. Werewolves are my weak spot (though I’ll never be team Jacob). In 2020 or 2021, I discovered fan fiction. I haven’t been the same since.

What’s the first thing you do when you sit down to work?

My work starts with an idea, which starts with image or memory. It could start with remembering a game the kids in my family used to play, where one person would cover themselves in a blanket and become “the monster.” They would then chase everyone else and get them under the blanket so they could be eaten.